Tag: japan quake death toll

The death toll from the monster 9.0-magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami that hit Japan climbed past 6,400 Friday as search teams continued to comb through the rubble.

Japan’s National Police agency said 6,406 people were confirmed dead and 10,259 were reported missing as of 9 a.m. Friday (8 p.m. Thursday ET).

Meanwhile Japanese authorities vowed Friday to keep dousing water on a troubled nuclear reactor, with its owner saying that earlier attempts have been "somewhat effective" in addressing radiation concerns.

Still, the Fukushima Daiichi complex of six nuclear reactors remained a danger. Radiation levels peaked Friday at 20 millisieverts per hour at an annex building where workers were trying to reestablish electrical power, "the highest registered (at that building) so far," an official with the Tokyo Electric Power Company told reporters.

The death toll from a powerful earthquake that rocked the northeastern and eastern regions of Japan on Friday is likely to surpass 1,000 as around 1,800 houses in Fukushima Prefecture were found to have been destroyed, according to the Defense Ministry.

A National Police Agency tally as of 4 a.m. Saturday showed that 178 people were killed and 584 others were missing as a result of the magnitude 8.8 temblor which struck around 2:46 p.m. Friday.

Meanwhile, around 200 to 300 bodies were found in Sendai’s Wakabayashi Ward, the Miyagi prefectural police said. Officials of the ward facing the Pacific Ocean said almost all of the approximately 1,200 households within a district for which a tsunami alert had been issued were affected by tsunami waves.

Several hundred other people were injured across an extensive area of Japan, the police said.

Dozens of people died in Iwate Prefecture as a result of the quake, including some due to a quake-triggered tsunami, while one or more deaths were reported in other prefectures including Fukushima, Miyagi, Tokyo, Ibaraki, Chiba, Kanagawa and Tochigi, according to local officials.